Driving Success: Automotive Solutions Built for Sales Efficiency

Strong communication with prospects and customers has always been an important part of doing business in the automotive sector. But in the current climate, it’s absolutely imperative.

Over the last seven months, sales of new cars have consistently increased, to the point that they are now up by more than 26% year-on-year. However, this is being counterbalanced by increasingly long lead times for new vehicles to be delivered. This means that maximising and nurturing each sales opportunity, potentially over a longer period of time, is an integral part of a successful sales process.

Effective use of the right purpose-built tools makes this easier and more efficient to achieve, and gives sales teams full control over a customer’s experience. In this blog, we’ll highlight the importance of these solutions in supporting the sales journey, improving customer confidence, loyalty - and ultimately revenue.

Encouraging customer trust

Purchasing a vehicle can be one of the biggest and most significant investments that a person will make. That’s why it’s so important that retailers recognise this, and do whatever they can to make customers feel confident throughout the sales journey.

Removing any uncertainty from the process is the best way of clearing doubt from customers’ minds. This means communicating with them on a regular basis: ‘little and often’ is much better than overloading customers every few months, or forgetting to get in touch at all. With so many customers to keep on top of, it can be easy to lose track of who to contact and when, but a good sales tool like Dealerweb Showroom allows you to set regular reminders on an individual customer basis.

Going beyond this, being proactive in communication can build even more positivity and trust between the customer and retailer, helping them feel excited about their potential purchase. Developing personalised videos in CitNOW Sales (integrated with Dealerweb Showroom) can inform, educate and entertain them on areas from manufacturing updates to how unique features work.

Accessing support

Given the current surge of customer interest in both new and used vehicles, it’s easy for sales teams to feel like there are ‘so many leads, and so little time’. However, there are many tasks and functions that solutions like Dealerweb Showroom, can make easier and quicker, maximising the service and support that sales staff can deliver to a wide customer base.

This can include lead management, creating customer offers, building orders, arranging finance agreements, planning marketing campaigns and much more. For maximum effect, these should be implemented throughout a retailer, with full training given to all relevant staff, so that individual employees can be self-sufficient in delivering smooth sales journeys and positive customer experiences.

Of course, as with any solution, there is always a period of acclimatisation for new users as they get up to speed with all the functions available to them. This is where access to support can be invaluable so that any issues that arise can be resolved quickly and with minimal business disruption. A good solution will come with a dedicated team of experts, available and easily contactable through the onboarding process and beyond.

Efficiency through integrations

Effective customer management can make a huge difference to the quality and consistency of the sales journeys and processes that retailers can offer. And while there are many solutions available that can support this, the biggest efficiencies are found when those solutions integrate and work together.

For example, the integration between Dealerweb Showroom and Dealerweb React ensures that 100% of leads are captured and responded to. By ensuring that all customer data exists in one place, and without any duplicated versions anywhere else, it’s easier to use that data for multiple functions (e.g. quotes and finance agreements) without any risk of confusion.

With Dealerweb Showroom in particular, there are even more integrations possible to simplify things yet further, including:

• Communication: personalised videos created through CitNOW Sales bridge the gap between online and offline communications
• Finance: Codeweavers and Black Horse are just two of the finance providers from which accessible, understandable financing options can be delivered to customers
• Part exchange: Tootle helps create seamless valuation and part exchange processes, positioned at the ideal point in the sales journey

In summary

While the potential for automotive solutions to transform sales journey efficiency is huge, the selection and implementation of them should be handled with care. Choosing ill-fitting solutions, or using them in a way that means sales teams aren’t getting the full benefit, would be a waste of time and investment.

Instead, you should look for solutions that are easy to use, come with full support services, and a range of integration opportunities that collectively join all the dots of a smooth, customer- centric sales journey together.

Take a closer look at how Dealerweb can help you build, implement and perfect your sales processes.